Earth vs Mars Review: This Is What Happens When Company of Heroes Devs Make an Advance Wars Game on a Lunch Break

It's a janky, goofy, cardboard cut-out of a tactics game... and I am absolutely charmed by it.

I started Earth vs Mars half-awake with a coffee in one hand, and was immediately assaulted by the loudest, brightest, and chattiest cartoon aliens I've ever seen. My first thought was, "This is from Relic?" The studio that made tank warfare feel like a symphony of destruction in Company of Heroes has now given me... this. A Hanna-Barbera sci-fi cartoon that plays like Advance Wars.

And the dialogue. You're just trying to figure out how to move, and these bubble-headed characters are debating the ethics of invasion in unskippable speech bubbles. You click. You click again. Welcome to the game, where the tutorial feels like detention.

Once I finally got to play, I moved my unit, attacked, and... watched two sprites kind of slap at each other like puppets. It's a rock-paper-scissors wargame, plain and simple. And I kept thinking, "This has to get deeper, right?"

Then I found the Splice-O-Tron, and oh my god, it does.

A Glorious Idea Called the Splice-O-Tron

This is the entire reason to play the game. It's a DNA blender that lets you fuse animal parts to your soldiers, and it's the best mechanic Relic has come up with in years.

Want a grunt with a rhino head for power, cheetah legs for speed, or fly wings for flight? Go nuts. It’s like someone fed Impossible Creatures to Advance Wars. This one idea is so weird, so smart, and so full of potential that it almost makes up for everything else.

The Cardboard Combat

Here's the problem: the rest of the game struggles to keep up with that one brilliant idea. The battles are simple, the AI telegraphs its moves like a bad magician, and the pacing is... well, it's a turn-based tactics game.

But the biggest sin, the one I just can't forgive, is the animation. It's awful.

When your glorious rhino-cheetah-fly-man attacks, he just... stands there and swipes the air, like he's fanning himself. There's no impact. No motion. No satisfying crunch. Relic used to make explosions that could knock the coffee out of your hand; now their monsters attack like they're afraid to wrinkle their costumes.

A UI That Hides the Fun

This all feeds into the main problem. The UI is a functional mess. The Splice-O-Tron lab should make me feel like a deranged scientist, but it's just bland menus.

Worse, the game does a terrible job explaining what my new monstrosities actually do. Stats are hidden behind vague icons, and I have no idea how my "Rhino Head" translates to the battlefield. I'm left muttering, "Did that do anything?" after a fight, which is the last thing you want in a tactics game.

The Campaign is a Chore, The Multiplayer is War

The single-player campaign is... fine. It's a safe, three-map tutorial that teaches you the basics and nothing more. It’s a chore.

Forget the campaign. The real game is in multiplayer.

I jumped into a map called "Barge Bay," and it was a revelation. It's a tight, 1v1 map where you start close enough to smell the other player. You're both racing to capture the four cities in the middle, and it is tense. It's fast, brutal, and scratches that "one more match" itch that made old-school RTS games so addictive.

This is where Relic’s design DNA is hiding. That old Company of Heroes spark, the back-and-forth, the counter-plays... it's all here, just translated into a turn-based format.

The Verdict

Earth vs Mars is a game with a serious identity crisis. It's a "Relic Labs" experimental side project that feels like it got rushed out the door.

It's janky, the animations are borderline embarrassing, and the UI actively works against its own best feature.

And yet... I like it.

The Splice-O-Tron is a genuinely brilliant idea. The core tactical loop is solid, and the multiplayer is a blast. It’s got that "cult hit" feel. For its low price, it’s a weird, charming, and fascinating mess that I can't stop tinkering with.

Score: 7.8/10 - It's not Relic's masterpiece, but it's the most charming science experiment I've played all year.

We at NLM received a key for this game for free, this however didn't impact our review in any way.

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